Expansion
1810s-1840s
Artistic propaganda like this promoted the national project of manifest destiny. Columbia, the female figure of America, leads Americans into the West and into the future by carrying the values of republicanism (as seen through her Roman garb) and progress (shown through the inclusion of technological innovations like the telegraph) and clearing native peoples and animals, seen being pushed into the darkness. John Gast, American Progress, 1872.
Contents
Expansion, 1810s-1840s:
Industrial Revolution
William James Bennett, View of South Street, from Maiden Lane, New York City, c. 1827
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Thomas Horner, “Broadway, New York,” 1836
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Industrial Revolution Quizlet
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Engraving based on W.H. Bartlett, “Lockport, Erie Canal,” 1839
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A. Janicke & Co., “Our City, (St. Louis, Mo.),” 1859
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Review:
- How did transportation developments and industrialization affect the nation’s economy?
- How did the North and South differ during the first half of the 1800s?
The Era of Good Feelings
Independence Day Celebration, 1819
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The Era of Good Feelings Quizlet
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Review:
- How did domestic and foreign policies reflect the nationalism of the times?
Jacksonian Democracy
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Andrew Jackson portrayed himself as the defender of the common man, and in many ways he democratized American politics. His opponents, however, zeroed in on Jackson’s willingness to utilize the powers of the executive office. Unwilling to defer to Congress and absolutely willing to use his veto power, Jackson came to be regarded by his adversaries as a tyrant (or, in this case, “King Andrew I”.) Anonymous, c. 1832.
George Caleb Bingham, The County Election, 1854. George Caleb Bingham created a series of paintings illustrating American democracy. He was drawn to the energy and near-chaos of speeches, rallies, election days, public announcements of voting results and more. On a county election day, children play games, drunkards raise their glass (while political operatives drag inebriated men to the poll), citizens carefully debate the issues, while others study the newspaper. Art historians argue whether Bingham is celebrating or mocking American democracy.
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Jacksonian Democracy Quizlet
This caricature of President Martin Van Buren cloaked in worthless bank notes was created during the Panic of 1837. The artist mocks Van Buren and the policies of his predecessor, Andrew Jackson. The cartoon includes mentions to Jackson’s “Specie Circular,” an order that government officials only accept gold or silver as payment for land and Van Buren’s “Safety Fund,” a program designed to offset the damage of bank failures. A document labeled “Indian claims” also refers to Jackson’s policy of Indian Removal.
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Many Americans blamed the Panic of 1837 on the economic policies of Andrew Jackson, who is sarcastically represented in the lithograph as the sun with top hat, spectacle, and a banner of “Glory” around him. The destitute people in the foreground (representing the common man) are suffering while a prosperous attorney rides in an elegant carriage in the background (right side of frame). Edward W. Clay, “The Times,” 1837
Review:
- What changes did Andrew Jackson represent in American political life?
- What major political issues emerged during the 1830s?
Reform Movements
“Camp Meeting of the Methodists in N. America,” 1819
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Membership Certificate to Conference Missionary Society, 1848. The Second Great Awakening moved American evangelicals to proselytize at home and abroad. The image on this lifetime membership certificate to a missionary society shows how the new member’s money will be used. The guiding hand of Providence and an angel bearing a book (presumably a Bible) hover at the top of the image. In the background, a mosque topples over. An African family kneels and reaches towards the heavens on the left side, while a minister preaches to Native Americans gathered before him on the right.
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William Lloyd Garrison published the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator.
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Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in Virginia in August 1831. Rebel slaves killed 55-65 people.
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Nathaniel Currier, “The Drunkard’s Progress.” 1846
“Tree of Temperance” and “Tree of Intemperance,” 1849. This pair of lithographs contrasts the “fruits” of abstaining from alcohol to those of indulging in strong drink. It leaves little to the imagination. Intemperance is symbolized by a diseased tree, surrounded by drunks outside of a pawn shop and a woman and her children being thrown out of their home. The lush foliage of temperance, on the other hand, is surrounded by prosperous church-going farm families.
Review:
- How did the Second Great Awakening affect life in the United States?
- What were the main features of the public school, penitentiary, and temperance reform movements?
- How did reformers try to help enslaved people?
- What steps did American women take to advance their rights in the mid-1800s?
Westward Expansion
Fort Laramie as it looked prior to 1840
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The great environmental and economic potential of the Oregon Territory led many to pack up their families and head west along the Oregon Trail. The Trail represented the hopes of many for a better life, represented and reinforced by images like Bierstadt’s idealistic Oregon Trail. Albert Bierstadt, Oregon Trail (Campfire), 1863
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President James K. Polk and First Lady Sarah Childress Polk demand control of the Oregon Territory north to the 54-40 line of latitude to fulfill America's Manifest Destiny.
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Though the Mexicans overwhelmed the Texan defenders at the Battle of the Alamo, the crushing defeat became a rallying call to Texans and inspired final final in the Texas Revolution.
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“General Scott’s entrance into Mexico.” Lithograph. 1851. Originally published in George Wilkins Kendall & Carl Nebel, The War between the United States and Mexico Illustrated, Embracing Pictorial Drawings of all the Principal Conflicts (New York: D. Appleton), 1851
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Westward Expansion
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Westward Expansion Quizlet
American artist George Catlin traveled west to paint Native Americans. In 1832 he painted Eeh-nís-kim, Crystal Stone, wife of a Blackfoot leader
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Review:
- What were the causes of westward migration?
- How did the revolution in Texas lead to war with Mexico?
- What were the effects of the Mexican-American War and the California Gold Rush?
Readings
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Seven Maps That Explain the United States' Strategy
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The Oregon Trail
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The Oregon Trail
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Primary Sources
- Letters from Venezuelan General Francisco de Miranda regarding Latin American Revolution, 1805-1806 - During a trip to the United States, Venezuelan General Francisco de Miranda worked to launch a revolution in Venezuela that he expected would spread throughout South America. He made a series of high-level contacts, as indicated in the letters below. The American public saw South American revolutionaries as “fellow republicans.” At least three American ships, numerous American guns, and about 200 recruits participated in Miranda’s failed attempt at Revolution.
- Missouri Controversy documents, 1819-1820 - Southerners dominated the highest federal offices for the first decades of the United States, as Virginians held the Presidency for nation’s first thirty-two of the first thirty-six years. Northerners resented this dominance and sectional tensions simmered until they threatened to boil over in 1820 when James Tallmadge included the below amendment to Missouri’s application for statehood. Included below is Tallmadge’s amendment; the final act which settled the crisis, at least temporarily; and a private letter from Thomas Jefferson illustrating his reaction to the crisis.
- President Monroe outlines the Monroe Doctrine, 1823 - The spirit of Manifest Destiny had its corollary in an earlier piece of American foreign policy. Americans sought to remove colonizing Europeans from the western hemisphere. As Secretary of State for President James Monroe, John Quincy Adams crafted what came to be called the Monroe Doctrine. President Monroe outlined the principles of this policy in his seventh annual message to Congress, excerpted here.
- David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, 1829 - David Walker was the son of an enslaved man and a free black woman. He traveled widely before settling in Boston where he worked in and owned clothing stores and involved himself in various reform causes. In 1829, he wrote the remarkable Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. In it, he exposed the hypocrisies of American claims of freedom and Christianity, attacked the plan to colonize black Americans in Africa, and predicted that God’s justice promised violence for the slaveholding United States.
- William Lloyd Garrison introduces The Liberator, 1831 - William Lloyd Garrison participated in reform causes in Massachusetts from a young age. In the 1820s he advocated black colonization in Africa and the gradual abolition of slavery. Reading the work of black northerners like David Walker changed his mind. In 1831, he created a newspaper, called The Liberator. The following is the opening essay that Garrison used to explain the purpose of his paper.
- Andrew Jackson’s veto message against re-chartering the Bank of the United States, 1832 - President Andrew Jackson, like Thomas Jefferson before him, was highly suspicious of the Bank of the United States. He blamed the bank for the Panic of 1819 and for corrupting politics with too much money. After Congress renewed the bank charter, Jackson vetoed the bill. The following was the message he gave to Congress after issuing his veto. Jackson’s decision was controversial. Some Americans accused him of acting like a dictator to redistribute wealth. Others saw the act as an attack on a corrupt system that only favored the rich.
- Rhode Islanders protest property restrictions on voting, 1834 - Many poor white men gained voting rights, also known as suffrage, for the first time in the 1830s. These changes in American democracy did not take place without conflict. Voting rights in Rhode Island only changed after poor Rhode Islanders raised a militia and threatened violence. Below is the proposal of many of the men who seven years later took up arms to right for voting rights.
- Rebecca Reed accuses nuns of abuse, 1835 - In 1834 anti-Catholic rioters burned the Ursuline Convent in Charestown, Massachusetts. In 1835, Rebecca Reed published a memoir about her time staying at the convent. Prior to its publication, rumors existed about Reed’s experience that may have motivated the arsonists. In these documents, we read excerpts from Reed’s account and the response from the convent’s Mother Superior Mary St. George.
- Samuel Morse fears a Catholic conspiracy, 1835 - Irish immigrants in the early nineteenth century filled jobs created by the Market Revolution. Their arrival provided an important source of labor for a growing economy, but many Americans worried about the influence of these arrivals. Samuel Morse, an inventor who contributed to the development of the telegraph and Morse Code, feared that Irish immigrants represented the front line of a Catholic conspiracy to destroy the United States.
- Revivalist Charles G. Finney emphasizes human choice in salvation, 1836 - Charles Grandison Finney left a successful law practice when he believed God called him to become a preacher. He enjoyed great success, particularly in Upstate New York, a region that Finney called “the burned over district.” Finney’s revivals emphasized human action, and he encouraged his converts to join various reform organizations, including avoiding alcohol and eventually opposing slavery.
- Cherokee petition protesting removal, 1836 - Native Americans responded differently to the constant encroachments and attacks of American settlers. Some resisted violently. Others worked to adapt to American culture and defend themselves using particularly American weapons like lawsuits and petitions. The Cherokee did more to adapt than perhaps any other Native American group, creating a written constitution modeled off the American constitution and adopting American culture in dress, speech, religion and economic activity. In this document, Cherokee leaders protested the loss of their territory using a very American tactic: petitioning.
- Angelina Grimké, Appeal to Christian Women of the South, 1836 - Women were active participants in every aspect of the abolitionist movement. In this document, Angelina Grimké, a former Southerner herself, attempts to persuade Southern women of the immorality of slavery. This tactic, called moral suasion, directed the efforts of abolitionists, especially in the 1830s and 1840s.
- Sarah Grimké calls for women’s rights, 1838 - Antebellum Americans increasingly confined middle-class white women to the home, where they were responsible for educating children and maintaining household virtue. Yet women used these ideas to become more active in the public sphere than ever before, taking prominent roles in all the major reform causes of the era. Women’s participation in the antislavery crusade most directly inspired specific women’s rights campaigns. In this document, Sarah Moore Grimké calls for equality between men and women.
- Black Philadelphians defend their voting rights, 1838 - The expansion of voting rights to poor white men brought a loss of voting rights for black men. Race, rather than class, quickly became the most important social distinction in the United States. Some wealthy black men, like James Forten and Robert Purvis of Pennsylvania, lost voting rights that they previously enjoyed. In this document, Philadelphians protest the loss of their voting rights.
- Dorothea Dix defends the mentally ill, 1843 - Dorothea Dix worked as an educator and author until she took up the campaign for improving the treatment for the mentally ill. Struggling with depression and other mental illnesses herself, Dix presented this petition to the Massachusetts state legislature after visiting a number of jails to chronicle abuses.
- Wyandotte woman describes tensions over slavery, 1849 - In 1843, the Wyandotte nation was forcefully removed from their homeland in Ohio and brought to the Kansas Territory. They found themselves on a borderland between Indian Country and Missouri’s slave society, and when the national Methodist church split, debates over slavery threatened the Christianity of the Wyandotte. This letter depicts the complex relationship between recently removed Native peoples, Christianity, and slavery.
- Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” 1852 - Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland in 1818. He was separated from his mother in infancy and lived with his grandmother until he was separated from her as well at age seven. After several attempts, he finally successfully escape slavery in 1838. He became one of the most influential abolitionist speakers and before a crowd of white abolitionists in 1852, he delivered this, one of the greatest abolitionist speeches.
- Henry David Thoreau reflects on nature, 1854 - The Transcendentalist movement began in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1836, when a group of Unitarian clergymen formed what later became known as the Transcendental Club. The club met for four years and quickly expanded to include numerous literary intellectuals. Among these were the author Henry David Thoreau. In 1845, Thoreau took up residence at Walden Pond and began to write. The result was Walden, which touted simple living, communion with nature, and self-sufficiency.
- Diary of a woman migrating to Oregon, 1853 - The experience of migrating west into territory still controlled by Native Americans was difficult and dangerous. In these diary excerpts we find the experience of Amelia Stewart Knight who traveled with her husband and seven children from Iowa to Oregon. She was pregnant the entire trip and gave birth to her eighth child on the side of the road near the journey’s end.
- Pun Chi Complains of racist abuse, 1860 - The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought a major influx of Asian immigrants to the new state. This number only grew after railroad companies turned to Chinese laborers to build western railroads. Life for these immigrants was particularly difficult, as even financially successful Chinese immigrants faced considerable discrimination. In 1860, the Chinese merchant Pun Chi drafted this petition to congress, calling on the legislature to do more to protect Chinese immigrants.
Slideshows
Videos
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